The invention concerns an analytic spectrometer in particular an infrared (IR) spectrometer with a central computer, permanently installed and exchangeable components such as a radiation source, a detector, a beam splitter, a filter, external measurement probes and the like, whereby the exchangeable components each exhibit a readable data medium with encoded data of parameters characterizing the respective optical component.
A spectrometer of this kind is, for example, known from the article "FTIR Spectroscopy for the Analytical and Research Laboratory" by J. Sellors in the American journal "American Laboratory", April 1992, pages 23 through 30.
In the Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer described therein, which is principally utilized for research, a large number of software-controlled internal components are provided for which leads to an enormous number of possible permutations. In a system of this kind it is therefore important that each current configuration of system components be recognized in a manner which is as automatic as possible and communicated to the central computer. In order to automatically determine the type of at least those system components which are subject to exchange these components are equipped with a bar-code which with the assistance of bar-code reading instruments can be read-off from the corresponding component as information concerning the component type and transferred to the central computer.
In addition information concerning the position of the corresponding component is transferred to the computer so that a system representation of the current spectrometer configuration can be reproduced in the memory of the central computer at any time and as a consequence decisions concerning the operation or the change of the spectrometer can be derived by means of the central computer.
The known spectrometer further provides for a submemory allocation in the central memory in which special data concerning component types which are recognizable with the assistance of the bar-code can be stored. These types of data can, for example, be calibration curves characterizing the performance of the corresponding component type. In this fashion the central computer of the spectrometer is provided with the capability of reaching complicated decisions concerning the areas of applicability of the spectrometer, of determining possible incompatibilities or insufficiencies in the current configuration, and of demanding appropriate assistance.
In addition to the bar-code, resistor networks or appropriately formed contact plugs can be utilized as data storage media for the respective exchangeable system components. In all spectrometers known to date, these data media contain however only very limited amount of information, namely the information concerning the type of the corresponding components and possibly their production date. All other important information concerning the component type, for example fundamental calibration curves or function diagrams have been up to this point stored in the normally plentiful memory of the central computer which is always part of a spectrometer. The information concerning the corresponding system components encoded onto the data medium was therefore, up to this time, exclusively passive and static and did not allow for a change in the stored data, for example, for the purpose of adjusting an individual current parameter value which characterizes the instantaneous state of the system component.
When therefore in a known spectrometer, a component was exchanged with another component, it was necessary to usually first determine the individual properties of this component through measurements before the spectrometer could be rendered operational. This is particularly disadvantageous for system components which were removed from another spectrometer since individual data concerning the components which possibly had already been taken in the other spectrometer did not automatically move during the transfer of the component to the new installation location. Only in the event that the two spectrometers communicate with each other and are capable of exchanging data, stored in their central computers, concerning their system components can this problem occurring in conventional spectrometers be solved. Such a networking of spectrometers is, however, difficult and is normally not done.
A further problem consists in the handling of exchange components which, for example, a customer of a spectrometer manufacturer receives as substitutes for defective components. In this situation the customer is interested in the particular data of the replacement component and the manufacturer is interested in the characteristic data known to the customer of the exchange component, which possibly can only be reconstructed with a certain degree of difficulty. In both cases it is only possible to supply this individual data concerning a spectrometer component in a manner which is separate from the component itself.
It is therefore the purpose of the present invention to present an analytic spectrometer whose components can be utilized in a much more flexible fashion in various locations in equivalent spectrometers or in other spectrometers whereby the respective components, without any additional measures, such as measurements of characteristic properties of the component, can be installed in any arbitrary spectrometer and be immediately available for operation.